A Collaboration of Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Institute of Biosciences & Technology of Texas A&M Health Science Center
www.gulfcoastconsortia.org
Congratulations
The CPRIT-funded Computational Cancer Biology Training Program (CCBTP) (CPRIT RP170593; Program Director Dr. Monte Pettitt, UTMB) announces the one-year re-appointment of postdoctoral fellows who conduct research at the interface of computational and physical science with basic and clinical cancer biology: Didier Devaurs, Rice U (mentors Lydia Kavraki, RU, Greg Lizee, MDA); Amit Gupta, UTH (mentors Alex Gorfe, UTH, Anil Sood, MDA); Mohit Jolly, RU (mentors Herbie Levine, RU, Sam Hanash, MDA); Fengyun Ni, BCM (mentors Qinghua Wang, BCM, Jianpeng Ma, BCM); Shivanand Pudakalakatti, MDA (mentors Pratip Bhattacharya, MDA, Cindy Farach-Carson, UTH); Olga Samoylova, UTMB (mentors Monte Pettitt, UTMB, Petr Leiman, UTMB); Yingjie Zhu, UTMB (mentors Malgorzata Rowicka-Kudlicka, UTMB, Eric Wagner, UTMB).
The NIH/National Library of Medicine-funded NLM Training Program in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science (NIH/NLM 2T15LM007093-26; Program Director Dr. Lydia Kavraki, Rice U) announces the new one-year appointment of Predoc Jonas Actor, Rice U (mentors Beatrice Rivière, RU, David Fuentes, MDA), and the one-year re-appointment of fellows: Predoc Jayvee Abella, Rice U (mentors Lydia Kavraki, RU, Cecilia Clementi, RU); Postdoc Sara Di Rienzi, BCM (mentors Robert Britton, BCM, Oleg Igoshin, RU); Postdoc Parisa Imanirad, MDA (mentors Han Liang, MDA, Prahlad Ram, MDA); Postdoc Zhihua Qi, BCM (mentors Yongtao Guan, BCM, Rui Chen, BCM); and Postdoc Di Zhang, BCM (mentors Suzanne Leal, BCM, Marek Kimmel, RU).
2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award RFA
The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) is pleased to announce the RFA for the 2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award Program. Launched in 2009 as a 10-year program with generous support from the John S. Dunn Foundation, this seed grant program continues to build the collaborative environment of the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC) and the interdisciplinary and interinstitutional culture of the Gulf Coast Consortia. To be eligible for research or event awards, new collaborative groups must include one BRC tenant (list provided on website) and must propose a new research project or event. Preproposals will be due on June 1, 2018. More information or contact Suzanne Tomlinson.
UPCOMING GCC EVENTS
No Keck Seminar March 30
There will be no seminar March 30. Upcoming speakers: April 6, Alyssa Brewer, UC Irvine, will present Quantitative Neuroimaging Approaches to Measure Pain Representations in Human Cortex and Subcortex ; April 13, Yu Liu, University of Houston, will present H19X Regulates Growth and Metabolism in Striated Muscles; and April 20, Marc Morais, UTMB, will present Looking Under the Hood of a Viral dsDNA Packaging Motor. Seminar at 4pm. Networking and refreshments will follow at 5pm, BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Room 280. Seminars are free and open to the public. Seminar Schedule Live webcast
Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship Seminar, April 5
Please join us for our upcoming Antimicrobial Resistance Seminar that will feature David Perlin from New Jersey Medical School, who will speak on Clinical Antifungal Drug Resistance: Mechanisms and Drivers. The seminar will take place from noon to 1:00 pm on the 2nd floor of the McGovern Medical School at 6431 Fannin, Room MSB2.135 . Note that registration is not required, and boxed lunches will be provided to the first 50 attendees.
Translational Pain Research 8th Annual Symposium, April 6
Confirmed speakers include Alyssa Brewer, UC Irvine; Ru Rong Ji, Duke University; Rebecca Seal, University of Pittsburgh; and Greg Neely, University of Sydney. Please plan to join us for this outstanding symposium. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Auditorium. Registration
NeuroNex DataJoint Training Workshop, April 19-20
In this 2-day, hands-on NeuroNex workshop, participants will learn to build relational databases to support data pipelines for complex scientific projects using the open-source DataJoint framework. The workshop will be taught in Python with brief discussions of the MATLAB equivalent. Although DataJoint is a general framework, illustrating examples and worked problems will be based on common neuroscience experiments and recording modalities. We invite scientists (faculty, postdocs, grad students) who are involved in acquisition, processing, and analysis of data in neuroscience and related fields, particularly those that are part of collaborative projects. Basic knowledge of Python is required for solving exercise problems. Contact: Dimitri Yatsenko, dvyatsen@bcm.edu. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Room 280, Registration
UTMB 23rd Annual Sealy Center for Structural Biology Symposium, April 28
Confirmed speakers include: Grant Jensen, California Institute of Technology; Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, University of Michigan; Andrew Routh, UT Medical Branch Galveston; Joan-Emma Shea, UC Santa Barbara; Yizhi Tao, Rice University; Adam Zlotnick, Indiana University. Symposium website
Research Mentor Training Workshop for Postdocs, May 2
This important workshop is designed to help postdocs develop skills and insight in mentoring young scientists and to provide the opportunity for interactions between mentors at different institutions and in different disciplines. Time: 9:30 am - 3:00 pm; lunch will be provided. Location: BioScience Research Collaborative, Event Hall, 6500 Main Street. Spaces are limited. Registration deadline: April 23.
NMR and Cell Tracking Symposium, May 16
Confirmed speakers include Eric Ahrens, UCSD; Craig Malloy, UTSW; Naomi Halas, Rice University; and Matthew Allen, Wayne State University. Additionally, local speakers will discuss current NMR methods and highlight existing resources and technologies available in GCC institutions. Sponsored by the GCC Consortium for Magnetic Resonance. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, 8:30 am to 5 pm. Registration
1st Annual GCC Mental Health Research Symposium, May 18
Confirmed speakers include Ronald Duman, Yale University; Mary Kay Lobo, University of Maryland School of Medicine; and Susan Koester, NIMH. Sponsored by the GCC Cluster for Mental Health Research. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St. Registration
Reproducible Research (RR) with R and RStudio Workshop, June 6, 10 am -2:30 pm
First in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop will: 1) discuss examples motivating the shift to RR; 2) survey the simple nature of the most common problems; 3) discuss organizing data as projects; 4) use Rstudio, knitr, and rmarkdown to illustrate the use of literate programming to interleave text describing the analyses with the code producing the results; 5) use Rstudio, devtools, and roxygen2 to construct a basic R package; 6) survey other commonly used tools and give pointers to how they might be used and where to learn more. This course will take place from presumes some working knowledge of R. Attendees are requested to bring laptops with recent versions of R and Rstudio installed, as well as the R packages knitr, rmarkdown, devtools, roxygen2, and RTools (this last is for Windows PCs; it’s required to compile R packages). BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St Limited to the first 30 registrants. Registration
Scientific Data Integrity Workshop, June 13, 10 am -2:30 pm
Second in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop is designed to cover fundamental elements necessary to help assure the quality and integrity of data derived from research studies. The workshop will review best practices for documentation of research activities, data capture, data (and document) management, and introduce risk mitigation strategies to enhance study reproducibility. A combination of mini lectures, case studies, and group exercises will comprise the activities. Knowledge gained will allow attendees to implement lessons learned within their research environment as elements of a quality system or internal to an individual research project. BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St Limited to the first 50 registrants. Registration
q-bio 2018 Conference, BioScience Research Collaborative, June 26-29
The goal of the q-bio Conference is to enrich the connection between modeling and quantitative experimentation in biology. This year’s conference features invited speakers doing innovative work in biomechanics, biological physics, systems and synthetic biology. Faculty, grad students and postdocs are encouraged to attend. The GCC/Keck Center is a co-administrator for this international conference. Please see website for details.